Adams will study industry/engineering school gap

STANFORD -- Professor Jim Adams, mechanical engineering and industrial
engineering/engineering management, has been appointed senior associate dean
for special projects in the School of Engineering.

Dean Jim Gibbons said that Adams will be responsible for encouraging and
coordinating initiatives that would allow the school to “more actively
adjust to the rapid changes now taking place in industry and in the
engineering profession.”

Discussing his new position, which began in September, Adams said that
recent radical changes in engineering stem from intense international
competition, the end of the Cold War and the rapid development of engineering
tools, such as the computer and associated software.

Industrial products, he said, are now developed by interdisciplinary,
cross-functional teams of people representing several engineering fields such
as mechanical, electrical and industrial engineering, and associated
disciplines such as marketing and industrial design. These teams consider
functions ranging from initial definition through manufacturing to service of
the product. It is increasingly likely, he said, for processes to cross
international boundaries and for products to be marketed internationally.

“Engineering schools typically are organized along disciplinary and
functional lines and focused on individual accomplishment,” Adams said.
“They are oriented more toward understanding phenomena and discovering
new technology and less toward understanding and managing the engineering
process, which is now a topic of great importance in industry.”

Gibbons said that although the pursuit of scholarship requires retention
of a disciplinary focus, “disciplines are changing and our educational
responsibilities require that we think deeply about the background that our
students need in order to be the engineering leaders of the 21st
century.”

He said that Adams “will be a focus for such thinking and for
resulting action” at Stanford.

Within the school, Adams formerly served as associate dean for academic
affairs; chair of the program in Values, Technology, Science and Society;
director of the design division of Mechanical Engineering; and chair of the
Department of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management. His
university service includes a stint as chair of the faculty Advisory Board,
and he has received both the Dinkelspiel Award for outstanding service to
undergraduate education and the Lyman award for faculty volunteer service.

Adams earned his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering at
CalTech in 1955. He studied art at UCLA, then came to Stanford, where he
earned master's and doctoral degrees in 1959 and 1961. He was employed by
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory before returning to join the faculty in 1966.

-kb-

941108Arc4059.html

This is an archived release.

This release is not available in any other form.
Images mentioned in this release are not available online.
Stanford News Service has an extensive library of images,
some of which may be available to you online.
Direct your request by EMail to newslibrary@stanford.edu.